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Spatial Data Management

Conference Paper · July 2006

DOI: 10.13031/2013.21960

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 Spatial Data Management
Karel Charvat1, Stepan Kafka1, Stanislav Holy1, Petr Horak1, Jáchym Cepicky4, Milan
Kocáb2, Tomas Cajthaml2, Ivana Valdova2, Milan Konecny3,Petr Kubicek3, Karel Stanek3
1, Wirelessinfo, Cholinska 1048/19, Litovel, 78401, Czech Republic
Tel: +420604617327, Fax: +420281973501, Email: charvat@wirelessinfo.cz
2 VUGTK, Zdiby 98, CZ-250 66, vCzech Republic
3 Laboratory on Geoinformatics and Cartography, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, BRNO
4 Department of Geoinformation Technologies, LDF MZLU v Brně, Zemědělská 3, 613 00 Brno
jachym.cepicky@centrum.cz

Abstract.
The objectives of the SpravaDat (Data Management) project are to support better utilisation and
commercialization of spatial data in Europe to provide information for public and private activities/services
and to build Internet and Mobile Internet GIS European Market place, where spatial data from different
source will be shared, accessible for another application, distributed and sell. The main subtasks are
• To design new business processes supporting better utilization of existing data sources and data
sharing
• To standardised and improve the accessibility to the digital data collection in order to create an
inventory of rural related data sources, farm and forest surveys and establishment of standardized
metadata bases, catalogue and gazetteer services with the respect to INSPIRE recommendation. This
increases the effectiveness and efficiency of rural development, forest and farm activities monitoring,
regional support, and commerce, strengthen indifferent data sectorial analyses and contribute to more
objective decision-making.
• To solve questions of data security and intellectual rights protection
• To analyze market situation with spatial data and build business models based on Public Private
Partnership for data distribution and sharing the cost and incomes and on the base of this model
implement advanced Web Pricing & Ordering Service (WPOS)
• To implement advanced Metadata, Catalogue and Thesaurus for better data search
• To implement Web Mapping Services, Web Analytical Services, Web Feature Services and Web
Coverage Services into visualization tools and tools for maps composition.
• To implement Web Processing Services for remote data analysis
The project SpravaDat is also base for participation of Czech Republic in process of United Nation Spatial
Data Infrastructure managed by Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations,
Keywords.. Spatial data sharing, Web Services, Data management

Introduction
There are different aspects associated to the interoperability, accessibility and availability of the digital
spatial information that will be considered in SpravaDat:
• Technology.
• Legislation.
• Business.
• Environment and socio-economy.
• Public interests.
Between the different areas where the better utilisation and commercialisation of existing spatial digital
data will provoke a clear improvement of the state of the art and will have a clear socio-economic impact,
agriculture and forestry has been selected as one pilot application. This selection is based on different
criteria ranging form environmental to socio-economical and practical:
• Lacks of good-quality and affordable agriculture and forestry digital data limit the better
utilization of this data.
• Farmers and forest owners in Europe are very often micro-enterprises. Affordable and good
quality digital data will improve the competitively of those Smart and Medium Enterprises
(SMEs).
• There already exist technological solutions resulting of research project that are able to
support the current initiative.
In spite of the thematic pilot, SpravaDat demonstrates how the technological solution can be extended to
other rural digital spatial data sources and will analyse the European rural digital market as a whole.
Furthermore, the innovative use of the technology and the innovative approach of SpravaDat will be able to
be extended to application where digital spatial data are important.

From replication of spatial information to their sharing

Rapid development in new WEB-based technologies and knowledge management brings new demand
for new solutions for spatial information management. Currently Geospatial technologies completely move
from desktop GIS solutions to distributed WEB Geospatial systems with different access modes including
mobile devices. Such solutions bring new possibilities of utilization of spatial data, but they will also require
the change of philosophy of utilization of spatial information. The main principles of such systems will be
openness; it means better accessibility and usability of data. Future systems have to share data from
different sources. This sharing will be in both vertical and horizontal level (horizontal -data from different
regions, which will cover large areas, vertical – data from different users in one regions). Only such kind of
information and knowledge sharing will be able to offer possibilities to work with up to date spatial
information. The new systems will support networking of different data providers and data users on the base
of open platforms. These technologies will build new type of GIS information source networking and will
also support by this way possibility of public private partnership.

Bossiness models and digital right management

The important question is, why is necessary to build SpravaDat brokering system, why it is not possible
to establish direct link between data providers and data users on the base of INSPIRE principles and OGC
specifications There exist more topics, which are important for this brokering system:
• Search for relevant information – there is not possibilities to find relevant information without
existing catalogue services, also orientation in data, data validity could not be guaranty from
different sources and mainly for individual users is difficult is difficult to establish contract with
data providers
• Data security versus data usability – there exist to tendencies, on one side to offer to users
combination of different data sources and possibilities to provided data analysis on the
combination of data from different sources (this is for example not possible on the base of WMS
services, the WFS or WCS is required). However, from second side some services, as WFS, or
WCS are not able to protect data against coping. The brokering system give to users possibility
to use complex services but allowed protect data providers, because there is easy to make clear
contract between broker and providers
• The brokering system could offer different Web Analytical services and so give to users
possibility use this services without investment on the side of users.
• The Web pricing models allowed easy sharing incomes among partners and it is easier mainly
for large public organisation to solve this on the base of agreement with broker then to make for
example contract with every individuals

Basic architecture
SpravaDAt solution will be tested applications with agriculture and forest data as one from application
domains. To assure the extensibility of the solutions the technology approach has to fulfil the next
requirements

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 dd Integrovaná služba

Uživatel GIS klient

Uživatel tenký klient s
browserem

GIS klient Autorizace

Web browser

GIS data

GIS server 1 XML, WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS, autorizační služba

GIS http
Autorizace aplikace 1

GIS data 1

XML, WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS, autorizační služba

Data brockerage
GIS server 2

Interface Map maker Cenová služba

GIS aplikace
2

GIS data 2 Metadatová

služba Autorizace
GIS server 3

Autorizace
GIS aplikace
3 Katalogova
služba 1 Metadata

GIS data 3 XML, WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS, autorizační služba

Katalog Vizualizační
uživatelských služba
pohledů
Autorizace

XML, WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS, autorizační služba

XML, WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS,
XML,
autorizační
WSDL, Ws MS,
lužba
WFS, WCS, autorizační
XML,služba
WSDL, WMS, WFS, WCS, autorizační služba

Katalogový server

Analytiský server Interní server

Katalogová Autorizace
služba 2

Interní GIS data Autorizace

Analytický
Metadatová server
služba 2 Cenocá
služba

Interní GIS aplikace

Metadata 2

Picture 1. SpravaDat Brockerage system scheme

Metadata and thesaurus

Typically, geographic data are used by many people other than the producer. They are often prepared by
one individual or organization and used by another. Proper documentation will provide those unfamiliar
with the data with a better understanding, and will enable them to use them thoroughly. As geographic data
producers and users handle more and more data, proper documentation will provide them with a keener

4TH WORLD CONGRESS ON COMPUTERS IN AGRICULTURE

knowledge of their holdings and will allow them to manage data production, storage, updating, and thus
reuse in a better and more efficient way.
• For the purpose of communication between different metadata systems we have decided in
the first stage of implementation of portal to support Metadata system Micka.
The Micka is a Czech designed Metadata and catalogue system, currently existing in an English and
Czech version. These are the following basic functionalities
• ON-LINE metadata editing
• Import / export tools
• Multilingual (both environment and metadata)
• Context help
• OGC-catalogue 2.0 (CWS) support
• Extensible (user defined elements, standards…)
The supported data standards are
• ISO 19115 – Dataset metadata
• ISO 19119 – Services metadata (in development)
• ISO 19110 – Feature Catalogue (data structure)
• ISO 19139 – XML exports
• Dublin Core – other metadata
Micka supports the following profiles
• ISO
• INSPIRE
• Other profiles could be defined
From our point of view, this last element is a key factor in the new generation of digital thesauri. The
use of conceptual and linguistic information stored in other types of artefacts (e.g. in ontology) enables us
to take advantage of the structural thesaurus elements and increases the friendly nature of these tools for
non-specialist end-users.

Currently we implemented The AGROVOC Thesaurus trough Web services.It has been developed by
FAO and the Commission of the European Communities in the early 1980´s and has been used by AGRIS
and CARIS information systems of FAO for indexing and retrieval since 1986.

Map designer
The Map Project Manager (MapMan) is a software tool for users who want to create new map projects
and compositions. You can use the tool for works focused on the use and display of GIS data in the Internet
environment. MapMan is capable of creating various map compositions and you can use different data
sources – data on the local server, but also data available through web services, which are saved on an
external server. In the framework NATURNET-REDIME the portal MapMan is closely linked to other
portal components – metadata systems and the DHTML map client. You can use this functionality for
searching for data on external servers.
Map project selection –the user can make a selection from a list of completed projects and he can
display them in a map client. The detailed description of project and the preview can be included in the list
of projects. Each of the projects is linked to the DHTML map client and there it opens in the map client
window according to the project settings. You can access the list of projects also from other applications and
you can use it if you make new lectures, information pages, etc.
Creating a user project is a basic MapMan function for generating a new project. If you create a new
project, you can define data layers from different sources and according to data types you can set special
parameters for data display. You can save the data layers and data layer settings into a Repository for a
future use in another project. The setting can be defined as “private“ – only for the user who made it, or
“public“ – the setting will be available to every user.
Creating and setting a data parameters display – using MapMan you can create your personal
symbol set, you can create new symbols, define their setting and colour, you can combine symbols and
make special graphic symbols. The possibilities are limited by the character of real data layer – e.g. the data
from the local server or data through WFS can be displayed according to the user´s setting without any
problem.

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Web data analysis
Web Processing Service (WPS), originally named Geoprocessing Service, is defined in the draft
document 05-007r4, published by Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc on 16.9.2005. Current version of this
document is 0.4.0 [OGC 05-008]. Web Processing Service specification can be still found in the Discussion
Papers section on OGS's web site (http://www.opengeospatial.org/specs/?page=discussion). Though it is not
full standard yet, it can be used for the implementation of service, which would serve geoprocessing tools
through the web interface.
Target of WPS
The initial target was, to offer modules provided by GIS GRASS [GRASS] to the Internet public. We
started to implement OGS's Web Processing Service draft paper on May 2006. The version 0.1 offers
environment for developing own processes - geospatial operation. Although GIS GRASS had to be the
primary analytical tool, running on WPS server, it is possible to use other programs too (gdal [GDAL],
proj4 [PROJ4], ... ). There are two main advantages of these programs:
• They can be run from command line (CLI), without need (or possibility) of graphical user
interface (GUI), which makes them exactly the right tools for task like this
• Licence of this tools is GNU General Public Licence [GPL], so they are members of the
Open Source [OSI] programs family. This means no licence constraints by offering this
programs to the public on the server.
WPS Implementation
The implementation was called PyWPS and in currently version 0.1 it has following features:
• GetCapabilities request - returns XML with basic server characteristics
• ProcessDescription - returns XML giving detail information about one chosen process, about
it's inputs and outputs options and data formats
• Execute - which performs the computation and returns either resulting raster or vector map in
given format or XML containing information about the process workflow and link to
resulting map.
The WPS was implemented in Python programming language [PYTHON]. It should be as easy as
possible to define own process. Inputs and outputs structures are python dictionaries. One function should
every process have: function execute.

If Execute request is called, PyWPS will perform following steps:

* Temporary location is created. The coordinate system is 'xy' - without projection
• 'PERMANENT' and 'mapset' mapsets are created
• Whole process changes it's working directory, so it is working in the location directory
• Data are downloaded and stored in current working directory, so they can be directly used by
process
• Function execute() of the process will be called with dataInputs structure.
• At the end, execute() should return name of resulting file or literal value
• PyWPS moves resulting map to output directory or gives is directly back to the server
• The temporary location will be deleted

If the process is appropriate to work with existing data stored in some Location/Mapset directory on the
server, just temporary mapset within this location is created, execute() called and at the end, resulting data
are stored and temporary mapset is deleted.

Conclusion
The SpravaDat project is financed under grant scheme of Academy of Sciencies of Czech Republic
Information Society.

References
[OGC 05-008] Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. 2005: OpenGIS(r) Web Processing Service,
http://www.opengeospatial.org
[OGC 05-007r4] Open Geospatial Consortium Inc. 2005: OpenGIS(r) Web Processing Service,
http://www.opengeospatial.org
[GRASS] GRASS GIS - The World Leading Free Software GIS, http://grass.itc.it

4TH WORLD CONGRESS ON COMPUTERS IN AGRICULTURE

 [GDAL] GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, http://www.gdal.org
[PROJ4] PROJ.4 - Cartographic Projections Library, http://proj.maptools.org
[GPL] GNU/GPL - GNU General Public License, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
[OSI] Open Source Initiative (OSI), http://opensource.org
[PYTHON] Python Programming Language: http://python.org

4TH WORLD CONGRESS ON COMPUTERS IN AGRICULTURE

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